


I Wanted to Stay

by Emby_M



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/M, Italics galore, Krem is a big ol' fool, Krem is stupidly in love, Mentions of Sex, Morning After, Paternal Bull, Rejection Anxiety, Training as Stress Relief, Trans Male Character, all is well
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-04
Updated: 2017-03-04
Packaged: 2018-09-28 08:17:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,316
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10081145
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Emby_M/pseuds/Emby_M
Summary: He doesn’t pause — he can’t. Because if he pauses then he starts to think, and when he starts to think, he might leave Skyhold forever and leap off a cliff out of pure nervousness.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Hey yall! I'm super new to the fandom but I'm already full into Harding/Krem because Krem is a good and so is Harding and if I can't have either of them they can have each other.  
> Both Harding and Krem try to protect their hearts by assuming other people don't actually want them... they's wrong.  
> Also Dad!Bull is my lifeblood.  
> The sexy stuff is based off personal experience w/ trans boyfriends, if ur a trans gentleman and you're not feeling it's quite right, you can tell me!

He throws another punch into the dummy.

He doesn’t pause — he can’t. Because if he pauses then he starts to think, and when he starts to think, he might leave Skyhold forever and leap off a cliff out of pure nervousness.

So he keeps throwing rapidfire punches. At some point he swoops low and grabs one of the practice shields, rushing forward and bodychecking the dummy. The post it’s tied to gives a weak creak, and it’s almost satisfying if he didn’t feel so desperate.

“Krem!” Bull calls.

It’s still cold in the morning, misty and nipping at his bare shoulders. He abandoned his quilted shirt somewhere along the fence, so he’s only in his binder and trousers. Krem turns and finds Bull looks particularly grouchy for a morning he spent with his _kadan_.

“Mornin’,” he greets. Bull’s trivial complaints would keep him occupied too.

“Mind explaining why you weren’t in your room?” Bull says, like he’s scowling.

“Cuz I’m training?”

“And why Scout Harding was?”

Fuck.

That was exactly what he _didn’t_ want to think about — about waking to find Lace laying there, her freckled face calm and serene, breathing even and untroubled, content to sleep forever next to him — but it was too much to ask for.

That she hadn’t left yet.

He wanted to wake her, say good morning, enjoy the warmth of the blankets and her lips, but something within him curdled trying to imagine waking her up and her being - regretful, sorry. She would be polite but it would rend him in two if she had just made a _mistake,_ while he’s been pining for so, so long that now when he looks back at all his crushes over the years he realizes they’ve all been imperfect versions of her — too tall, too skinny, too much a strawberry-blonde rather than a redhead. That he’s been wanting her so long, and she was so - _into_ him, which was so much better than her being just _okay_ with him, giggled at how sensitive his tiny breasts are, commented that she never really _understood_ dicks, as an organ rather than a shape, and that him having folds like her was _good,_ and good god, she ate him out with a gentleness and a ferocity and one finger slipped up into him that left him giggly and breathless. She had even said he tasted nice, whatever that meant.

And if it had been a mistake-

If it had been a mistake then Krem would go down to the Hissing Wastes and let the sands consume him.

Bull is staring at him, the heat of his one remaining eye intense, like noon-day sun burning the back of his neck.

“Let me illustrate for you exactly what I found upon trying to find you. Scene, interior, your room. In I walk, expecting to see the tufts of your hair, just barely peeking over the covers because you _nestle,_ believe me, I’ve shared a tent with you enough times.”

Krem pulls his mouth in a tight line, betraying nothing. Bull teases him, affectionately, but this is - biting and painful, already. Like the canvas of his binder at the end of the day, biting his skin.

“Instead I find some beautiful red curls leaking out of the bedspread, with a little peek of a pale, freckled forehead. I run through my list of everyone that’s around that might fit that descriptor and I find only one candidate, aka Lace Harding, aka, the girl my bud Krem has had a crush on for _months._ ”

He doesn’t even know how much Krem likes her. If he did, he thinks Bull would be physically loading him into a trebuchet to fling him either into a wall to repent or back into his own bed to make matters right.

“Maybe I’m a little proud. A little giddy. But then I notice — oh, my buddy Krem _isn’t there with her._ And I’m thinking to myself, well, hell, I raised him better than that.”

“You walk out on a lot of your encounters.” Krem counters, balking.

“Sure, but those are strictly one-night-only. And I don’t think that the _honorable,_ the _secret romantic Kreme-de-la-creme_ would have only a one night stand with Scout Harding, who he has been in love with for _four thousand years_.”

Krem feels worry burble up in his chest, because that was - true. They had agreed on one night, no more if the other party didn’t want it, but he wanted — every one of her days. If she’d give them.

“So my presence wakes Ms. Harding, and she says hello, quietly, and I ask her where you are. And do you know what she does? She reaches back behind her, looking for you, and _doesn’t find it._ ”

His heart does a funny little flip. a painful one.

“And she turns, to verify, and then she turns back to me — and says in the saddest little voice, ‘I guess he’s not here. Maybe he reconsidered.’ So I thank her and leave, but Andraste’s perfectly-formed tits, I have never been angrier at you.”

Krem swallows, and mumbles out, “I didn’t reconsider.”

“What was that?” He says, a thunderous rumbling in his voice.

“I didn’t reconsider, I didn’t want to be there if she regretted it!” Krem shouts, clutching the practice shield closer. It’s — like a wound, being opened under Bull’s strangely paternal stare.

Bull puts his hands on his hips and pulls his lips into a tight line.

Then he lifts a hand, and points back in the direction.

“You go back to her this instant,” Bull says, and normally Krem would complain, say Bull was being too high-handed for his normal self but, he — can’t. Because this time Bull is right.

“Mama didn’t raise no coward!” Bull calls after him as he ditches the shield and throws on his quilted shirt, running all the while.

 

Lace is still there when he skids into his own room. She’s just almost dressed, her shirt on her arms but not over her head yet.

“Oh, um.” She says.

“I wanted to stay,” he blurts, and nearly kicks himself in the ass, “I was scared.”

Lace looks down, swallows, and puts her shirt on. “Of what?” She says, trying to be casual. He notices the tremor in her voice.

“That you’d regret it.”

At that, Lace looks up, and she furrows her brows.

“In what world would I regret amazing sex with the boy I like?”

The words are like a beautiful maul, whumped into his ribs. His breath comes out uneven, and he laughs. “I- The paranoid world.”

Lace laughs a little, nodding. “I can get that. When you weren’t there I- thought you had found me lacking somehow. Or maybe I said something wrong or - hurt you.”

_Whump._

“No, Maker, no, I- it was…” and Krem, smooth Krem, honorable Krem with the unchanging face, finds he has no words, “you were, wonderful. It was perfect. All I could ask for.”

Lace smiles, a little. “You were wonderful too.”

“I- really like you,” Krem finds himself saying. Why does he go so _stupid_ around her? “And, I have for like, so long. Bull’d say it was months but it’s been so much longer that I think it’s just kind of been forever. Everyone I liked was just you, but not quite right and I groaned so loud when I figured it out-”

And Lace comes over to him — she’s so short, it’s so cute, he wants to kiss her _this instant,_ wishes he didn’t have to telegraph that he was going to so he could swoop in on her and kiss her by surprise — and she rests her hands on his hips and laughs, pretty and tinkling like little bells.

“I really like you too. It’s the same for me. You’re just…”

And instead of finishing, she just smiles like he gave her the moon.

_Whump._


End file.
